Antifriction bearings or roller bearings provided with a cage assembled from segments are known. DE-PS 859 699 discloses a cross cylindrical roller bearing in which two succeeding cylindrical rollers are each turned by 90° to one another. The cage here consists of individual segments which are connected to one another and which form the entire cage structure.
DE 37 09 039 C2 discloses a cage for lengthwise movements in which individual cage segments are located behind one another.
For certain bearing applications, for example in heavy machinery construction, cross taper roller bearings are required. In these, two taper rollers follow one another in the peripheral direction of the bearing, each turned by 90°.
Here, it has been found to be problematical to make the cage such that the individual taper rollers are held at the desired distance to one another and, even when they do not need to transfer a load, are kept in their starting position. The diameter of the taper rollers for this type of bearings is always greater than the length of the taper roller. This means that taper rollers in a bearing provided with bearing play, but also in a preloaded bearing in which the deformation under load is greater than the preloading, have play while being loaded. These taper rollers then drop down due to their own weight until they contact the respective track. Upon repeated loading, these rollers must first again reach their starting edge on the ring; but this takes place only after a few revolutions of the bearing. This means that the taper rollers are briefly loaded in a nonuniform manner; which can quickly lead to overloading of the bearing.
Increasing the preloading of the bearing to prevent the indicated effect is not an effective solution because highly preloaded bearings have increased friction and consequently heat up more quickly. The service life of the bearing is thus reduced. Correspondingly highly preloaded cross taper roller bearings are therefore used mainly only for swivelling motions.